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Forget Graham & Dodd. Take those technical analysis charts and throw them in the trash. If your stock portfolio only included companies that were the primary college football bowl sponsors for 2011-12 you would have done much better than your typical, over-priced hedge fund manager.

NEW ORLEANS, LA - JANUARY 09: The Allstate BCS National Championship Game logo before the 2012 Allstate BCS National Championship Game between the Louisiana State University Tigers and the Alabama Crimson Tide at Mercedes-Benz Superdome on January 9, 2012 in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife).

Of last season's 35 bowl games, 10 were named after companies whose shares are publicly traded (excluding companies like Starwood Hotels, whose Sheraton subsidiary sponsors the Hawaii Bowl, and Fiesta Bowl sponsor Tostitos, which is made by PepsiCo). The performance of Kraft Foods Group, which went public in September, was omitted from the results, leaving a portfolio of nine stocks.

Here is their 1-year price performance (in U.S. dollars) compared with the S&P 500 stock index:

S&P 500 index: +12%

Allstate Corp.: +52%

AutoZone Inc.: +8%

AT&T Inc.: +16%

BBVA: -1%

Capital One: +25%

Discover Financial: +66%

Hyundai Motor: +8%

Northrop Grumman: +17%

Valero Energy: +41%

The stock prices of the nine college football bowl game sponsors rose an average of 26%, more than twice the S&P 500. Maybe it was all the television coverage the football games and sponsors got? Maybe it was pure luck? The point is: Why pay 20% when you can do better paying nothing and being a couch potato?